Hm, well, apparently after they got shut in their room for the night they started climbing things and a dresser tipped on the older one. He's fine, and I'm not commenting on any of it, but I'm a) going to stop procrastinating on installing those tip straps...just as soon as I have somebody to watch Vi while I do it, and b) seeing this as a cautionary tale. And now, to zone out and read (totally OT: Ariann, have you read "When God Was a Woman"? I think you would have more interesting and informed things to say about it than anyone I know, so I'm curious)

Haven't read it, but have many things to say about the resurgence of "goddess" motifs in liberal religion lately. Should i read it?

I'm not sure. We're reading it for my [feminist] book group and it is interesting for sure, but I don't know how much I agree with the conclusions; I just haven't seen anything that would refute or confirm them. The introduction is pretty radical and fascinating, and I like her points that we tend to dismiss goddess-based religions as "cults" and the whole paradigm of talking about religion is subject to biases, like how we capitalize God but not goddess. Where it becomes more iffy, I think, is that her thesis is basically about how a patriarchal Indo-European invasian from the north around 3000BC[E] replaced the morality and matrilineal traditions of goddess-worshipping cultures with their own. And it goes so far as to propose that the Levites were an Indo-European upperclass among Israelites who were essentially the same as Luvians referenced elsewhere. I thought you might have some insight into the accuracy of any of this -- the book was written in the '70s and I'm sure there's been a lot of good biblical and anthropological scholarship on these topics since then -- and moreover as a feminist what you think of the whole idea that women's rights, feminism, etc. took a giant step backward with this northern white invasion.

In some ways the narrative of White Europeans coming to culturally infiltrate and suppress the native brown people and unseat their preexisting feminist utopia seems....almost like a too-well shoehorned narrative, you know what I mean? Like, the '60s and '70s were this huge time of recognizing and attempting to correct injustices and White/male privilege in scholarship, and it just fits a little TOO well into that somehow. It leaves me wondering how well the [scant, from the sound of things] evidence really fits her conclusions. And also, in general, what you as a feminist and a religious scholar think of the conflict between male and female deities being preeminent.

Little Izzy has to go under general anaesthethic (ack, spelling?!) tomorrow. The procedure he's being put under for isn't risky at all, but I'm just starting to get nervous about the rest of the process. Eeeeeeeeep.

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

Haven't read it, but have many things to say about the resurgence of "goddess" motifs in liberal religion lately. Should i read it?

I'm not sure. We're reading it for my [feminist] book group and it is interesting for sure, but I don't know how much I agree with the conclusions; I just haven't seen anything that would refute or confirm them. The introduction is pretty radical and fascinating, and I like her points that we tend to dismiss goddess-based religions as "cults" and the whole paradigm of talking about religion is subject to biases, like how we capitalize God but not goddess. Where it becomes more iffy, I think, is that her thesis is basically about how a patriarchal Indo-European invasian from the north around 3000BC[E] replaced the morality and matrilineal traditions of goddess-worshipping cultures with their own. And it goes so far as to propose that the Levites were an Indo-European upperclass among Israelites who were essentially the same as Luvians referenced elsewhere. I thought you might have some insight into the accuracy of any of this -- the book was written in the '70s and I'm sure there's been a lot of good biblical and anthropological scholarship on these topics since then -- and moreover as a feminist what you think of the whole idea that women's rights, feminism, etc. took a giant step backward with this northern white invasion.

In some ways the narrative of White Europeans coming to culturally infiltrate and suppress the native brown people and unseat their preexisting feminist utopia seems....almost like a too-well shoehorned narrative, you know what I mean? Like, the '60s and '70s were this huge time of recognizing and attempting to correct injustices and White/male privilege in scholarship, and it just fits a little TOO well into that somehow. It leaves me wondering how well the [scant, from the sound of things] evidence really fits her conclusions. And also, in general, what you as a feminist and a religious scholar think of the conflict between male and female deities being preeminent.

I am slightly perplexed by an argument about a "northern white invasion." And yes, the Levites were an upperclass among the Israelites, according to both the Bible and archeology. We "dismiss" goddess-oriented religions as cults because we call everything before Christianity a cult (as a technical term, not as a judgment). The Israelite religion of the second temple period is also technically called a cult. Religious scholars call things a "cult" or not based on the ritual practice involved and the object of the ritual practice. So the Israelite religion was called "the Temple cult." I don't think we have enough examples of organic modern religions which feature goddesses to have any idea what we would call them. The only one that comes to mind is Wicca, which religious scholars call a religion. I think the lay use of "cult" has more to do with charismatic leadership than anything else, and all the examples I can think of feature cults with male gods.

Without having read it and having no clear basis to refute any specific claims, I can say that I generally think very little of any theories about how goddess-worshiping societies were better for women than god-worshiping societies were. The archeological evidence does not support that in any way (it's hard to find a society that just has one deity that is a Goddess, so just relying on societies here who worshiped many figures and put plenty of emphasis on the female ones). Mostly stuff just sucked for women throughout. Within Judaism's evolution (and I think within Christianity as well), it has always been bad (in my opinion) both theologically and in terms of public policy, when the single deity got split up into female and male parts - the "female" parts of the deity were (of course) receptive, restrictive, focused on judgment (instead of lovingkindness and mercy), not creative, etc. The male parts were creative, loving, merciful, beautiful, outpouring of good stuff. Because the female aspect of God is a vagina and the male aspect of God is a penis, duh. A lot of these medieval ideas about God's femininity and masculinity have been recently taken up by new-agey sorts of religious feminists who are super stuck in their own essentialism (in my humble opinion, of course) and they are super obsessed by the idea of a goddess giving birth and breastfeeding so they want there to be a female-gendered deity to do that (p.s. in the Hebrew Bible it's the either male or nongendered singular deity who is depicted as nurturing, giving birth, and breastfeeding). It has always seemed a step forward theologically to me to have a single, nongendered deity that men and women have equal access to and who isn't constrained by human biology or social roles.

So, yeah. But theology/bible stuff from the 70s is always good for a chuckle anyway. :) The best of that stuff is anything by Phyllis Trible (a Christian biblical critic - and the consummate angry feminist) and she is awesome if you want to read someone who will tear apart the Bible in a feminist sort of way, based on textual evidence.

Little Izzy has to go under general anaesthethic (ack, spelling?!) tomorrow. The procedure he's being put under for isn't risky at all, but I'm just starting to get nervous about the rest of the process. Eeeeeeeeep.

Little Izzy has to go under general anaesthethic (ack, spelling?!) tomorrow. The procedure he's being put under for isn't risky at all, but I'm just starting to get nervous about the rest of the process. Eeeeeeeeep.

Aw, I'm sorry. Silas was under general when he was about 2 1/2. It was fast & relatively easy, but the part I wasn't prepared for was how scared/disoriented he was when he woke up. That first hour was rough afterwards, but he was back to himself within a few hours. Hope it all goes easily for little Izzy and you don't worry yourself too much <3

Thanks for the kind words! We just (an hour ago) found out he wasn't correctly listed on my benefits plan, so it won't update in time for the staff to okay it, so it's cancelled until next time there's a space. Half-relief, half-stressed. Ugggh.

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

poopiebaby was just playing with his stacking cups, stacking them up on the TV cabinet. He got the tower 6 cups high (there are 8 total) and couldn't reach to put the last two on. He asked me to do it for him but I told him to figure it out himself, thinking he would get his little chair to stand on (which he does ALL THE TIME). Instead he thought for a minute, then took two off the top of the stack, stacked the last two on top of those, then carefully lifted the small stack onto the large stack. Problem solving! It's amazing to watch him figure stuff out sometimes.

Fortunately our procedure isn't urgent - it does need to be taken care of, but he'll still be fine if we have to wait a bit longer. We're mostly upset because our hospital liaison wasn't particularly nice or helpful when we actually need it. Our benefits people were fantastic, and put a rush to have Iz put on properly, and I kid you not, he was added officially just 2.5 hours after the cut-off for the hospital to finish up our paperwork. Blahhh. On the plus side, Zeph seems to be sick, and he would have had to come and wait with us in the waiting room, and that would have been terrible. I guess it's all working out anyway.

Poopiebitch, I love watching babies/toddlers problem-solving! Poopiebaby sounds like he's at such a fun age. That's so awesome.

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

mitten - I have the same problem. I have to make a conscious effort to not jump in and help, even when he doesn't ask. If he starts getting frustrated, I try to talk him through the thought process - it really is amazing to me what he can figure out when I just give him the chance.

Z has finally figured out that he can play with my boobs. Ugh, nooooo! (It really is very amusing, but his older brother used to tweak my nipples all the time, and I hated it. I think that's where Z may be headed. Haha.)

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

heh, I made the mistake of not really minding it until she was over a year and started being a lot more, uh, aggressive. Lately I've been moving the hand away but I think it might be too ingrained by now.

Today is the day we discovered the joy that is hand lotion. Vi saw me putting on some and was pointing at it and demanding to try it herself, so i put a little dab on her hands and told her to rub them together. Aaand of course a minute later we were demanding more. And more. And more. And now I have to hide all my hand lotion because every time she sees a tube she demands to have some or throws a tantrum. Kid, stop raiding my Aveda stash.

Inez and I went to a dance class this morning and, while it was really fun, it managed to be 45 minutes of making me crazy with stupid gender shiitake. There were two other little girls, both wearing tutus and sparkly "princess" shirts (fine, whatever, not my cup of tea). There was one little boy. Any time the boy did anything, the instructor exclaimed about how strong he was, how athletic, how he'll be a great football player. The kids were doing that wheelbarrow thing where you hold their feet and the boy was told repeatedly how strong he was and how impressive his muscles are. Inez and the other girls did it and didn't get any comments from the teacher about being strong. The girls were praised for being pretty, looking like princesses, like ballerinas (the other two, not Inez in her black t-shirt). Ugh. I get so frustrated by this stuff.

Oh! And then we went to a doctor's appointment and the nurse tried to persuade Inez to let her measure her head by telling her the measuring tape thing was a tiara. Why not a hat? Or even a crown? Why does it have to be a tiara? Bleh.

Oh, and I should clarify: I think it's kind of shitty to talk to the boy that way, too. What if he just likes dancing? Not dancing so he'll be a better football player in 12 years? Or what if he's just a 3-year old having fun? Blah to everything!